Submerged liquid slag injection in steel melt: scaleup study using cold model and dimensional analysis

Abstract

Submerged injection of solid flux powder is used in the steel industry to eliminate impurities in an economical way. The efficiency of such an injection process is limited by the fact that only a fraction of the injected particles penetrate into the liquid melt, while the majority remain as bubble encapsulated solids, causing poor heat and mass transfer. Therefore, liquid slag injection can be considered a potential alternative technique in the refining of steel to improve the efficacy of mass transfer in such a process. In the present work, liquid slag injection in a steel melt has been simulated by means of laboratory scale cold model experiments in which, water, paraffin oil and benzoic acid have been used as low temperature analogues for liquid steel, slag and impurities, respectively. Through dimensional analysis it is observed that the modified Froude number can be considered as a criterion for scaling up such a process from a bench scale to a full scale system. A regression analysis has also been carried out to correlate the dimensionless mass transfer rate constant with the relevant dimensionless numbers, namely, dimensionless gas velocity, Froude number, aspect ratio and non-dimensional lance depth.